The term Operations Support System (OSS) generally refers to a system (or systems) that performs management, inventory, engineering, planning, and repair functions for communications service providers and their networks. Originally, OSS's were mainframe-based, stand-alone systems designed to support telephone company staff members in their daily jobs by automating manual processes, making operation of the network more error-free and efficient. Today's OSS's manage an increasingly complex set of products and services in a dynamic, competitive marketplace helping service providers maximize their return on investment (ROI) in one of their key assets—information. The ultimate goal of OSS's is to enable service providers to reduce costs, provide superior customer service, and accelerate their time to market for new products and services.
OSS's, such as the AGILENT QoS Manager, model the topography of the system under test and collect a variety of data describing the state of and activity on the system under test. For example, data can be gathered from individual applications, servers, network links and networking equipment. In general, the data comprises a stream of scalar values. OSS's receive and store the streams of values. The values are used to produce graphics describing the operation of the system under test. Such graphics may include graphs and charts, from which a trained user may assess end-to-end service performance. For example, displays may be formulated that provide an indication of whether the service provider is adhering to service level agreements with subscribers.
One type of display that has gained in popularity is TopN. TopN refers to a selected number “M” (n typically being a small value such as 5 or 10) of measurements selected from a sample space, wherein each selected measurement is in the top or bottom “M” of ordered measurements in the sample space. The sample space generally comprises all of the measurements taken over a predetermined period of time One example of a TopN measurement is the Top 10 response times for a particular web server. In this case the Top 10 responses are typically the 10 slowest responses, however it may represent the 10 quickest responses.
Current use of TopN measurements typically consists of the static presentation of the individual measurements within the TopN set of measurements. Because of the nature of the measurements, TopN measurements are not subject to the same analysis methods as other measurements, including such traditional OSS strengths as baselining and thresholding. One reason is that existing OSSs were programmed to process one scalar value at a time and are not adept at processing a chunk of measurements as presented by a TopN measurement.
Accordingly, the present inventors have recognized a need for new methods for handling TopN measurements that facilitates additional uses for TopN measurements within the framework of OSSs.